The Vampire's Tale
by robinwitch1
Summary: Continuing to search for anyone who can tell him about the Dragonborn, the researcher from the Synod goes to the one place he can still find those who lived during her time - Castle Volkihar. (A successor to "I take you with me" and "The Scavenger's Tale," though it can be understood without reading the first of these.)


**The Vampire's Tale**

"Leaving today, then?"

"Yes," I told the innkeeper. "My work here's done. Time to move on."

His face fell – that meant there would be no more Black-Briar Reserve sold for a long time, more than likely. But his tone remained deferential.

"And where would you be headed, in case someone arrives looking for you, or a message comes?"

"The northern coast. Sorry, I can't be more specific than that right now. You might suggest Dawnstar if anyone is desperate to find me."

The innkeeper nodded. "That I'll do. But it's a pity you don't have anything more precise. It makes me uncomfortable when messages and packages get misdirected."

"Dawnstar will be good enough," I repeated as I settled the bill. "The inn they have there, the old one... I forget its name. You can leave any messages there. I'll pass through sooner or later."

Actually, I knew very well where I was bound, but I had no intention of telling the innkeeper, or anyone else. They already considered me eccentric, at best, for my interest in the past. It certainly wouldn't help my reputation if it got about that my next destination was Castle Volkihar.

.

The Synod has always considered the Volkihar vampire clan to be one of the most important potential sources of information about the Dragonborn. First, there is the well-known fact that vampires, unless someone or something kills them, are effectively immortal. At Castle Volkihar I would be able to speak to witnesses who had been adult and active during the Dragonborn's time. Apart from this, the Dragonborn is known to have played a key role in the death of Lord Harkon, leader of the Volkihar vampires in her time, and the rise to power of his widow Valencia and daughter Serana. Finally, all reliable sources agree that the Dragonborn was personally accompanied by Serana for a considerable period. For instance, Imperial Legion documents indicate that Serana was serving the Dragonborn when both of them assisted in the Imperial reconquest of Skyrim during the Stormcloak rebellion. Again, the archivist of the Blades reports that Serana was involved in all but the last act of the hunt for Alduin, from its initial stages right up until the Dragonborn flew to Skuldafn Temple for the final confrontation. I didn't yet know whether Serana was still at Castle Volkihar, or whether she would be willing to say anything, but it was clear that if she did talk, her information might be invaluable.

Apart from all this, I had been instructed to clear up the mystery surrounding one of the Dragonborn's most significant contributions to the security of Skyrim, second only to the Covenant with the dragons: the reconciliation with the vampire race that had managed both to preserve the Volkihar clan and to make vampire attacks no more than a memory for the ordinary people of Skyrim. A secret arrangement had been reached between the Volkihar, the vampire-hunting Dawnguard (whom the Dragonborn had also served), and the jarls of Skyrim to ensure a stable and lasting truce, one that saw both the Volkihar and the ordinary people of Skyrim protected from attack. However, neither the jarls nor the Dawnguard have ever been willing to say how this was brought about, except in the most general of terms. Given that the vampire menace is a concern throughout Tamriel, the details of this secret pact, and whether its success in Skyrim can be replicated in other provinces, are obviously a matter of urgent interest to the Synod and the Imperial Court.

.

I had a general idea where Castle Volkihar was located, and had sent a message ahead introducing myself, to which I had received no reply. But how to get to the castle, surrounded as it was by water, was a mystery. None of my books on Skyrim touched on the subject. There was no port or settlement near that part of the coast, which seems to have remained as barren and isolated today as it was in the Dragonborn's time. The only structure within sight of Castle Volkihar is an old fort, Northwatch Keep, an abandoned Thalmor stronghold that fell into disuse after the end of the Stormcloak rebellion. One source reports that Northwatch Keep was in fact taken and burned by the Dragonborn, as part of her long-running vendetta against the Thalmor, but I could find no confirmation of this elsewhere.

Aimlessly wandering along one of the loneliest and least developed parts of the north Skyrim coast, even during the summer, was an unappealing and quite possibly fatal course of action. I decided to stay in Dawnstar at the Windpeak Inn for a few days, just as I had told the innkeeper I would, and see what alternatives were available. It was all the more difficult to find out anything useful while concealing where I wanted to go, but letting my destination become generally known still seemed a bad idea. I left that for an absolute last resort.

I was walking along the Dawnstar docks three days later, bound for nowhere in particular, when my luck turned. The ship at the far end had been tied up to the dock the whole time I had been there, loaded with a full cargo of lumber. As I approached that day, I saw that the captain was engaged in a loud altercation with two other men who seemed to be members of his crew. The dispute ended with the two making haste down the gangplank and along the dock, scampering past me as if they were escaping from a demon, while the captain glared at their retreating forms with a mixture of dismay and disgust.

He turned his attention to me as I drew level with his ship, and made a sweeping gesture of contempt in the general direction of his unfaithful crew members: "Cowards! You can't be a sailor and be afraid of your own shadow. And the sea can deal out enough in the way of terror without imagining things that aren't there any longer and haven't been there for years on end. I wasn't even asking them to go ashore. They could have stayed on board for the whole time, and the trip's no more than a couple of days at the very most, including the time to unload at the other end. As if they'd attack us when they need what we're bringing and need us back again as quickly as we can sail. Gods know, there aren't any useable trees on that damned island of theirs."

He spat over the side. "But no, not a single man is willing to help even at triple pay. You wouldn't be looking for work yourself, would you? I only need one man for such a short trip, though it would be better with two. Have you ever been on a boat?"

"I've sailed, though it was years ago." As a matter of fact, that was no lie; as a very young man I had fished for a season or two when saving money for my studies. "But what's the destination, and why are they so reluctant to go? Sailors aren't usually that timid a lot." I had guessed the answer already from what he had said, but I wanted to tease as much detail out of him as possible.

"Oh..." He hesitated a moment. "Well, this load of wood is _supposed_ to be going to Castle Volkihar. A short trip, and simple, if you can forget the stories your grandma told you about those who live there. They've been rebuilding for years and years now, and they're in dire need of wood and iron and cut stone. As I said, there's nothing but that huge old castle on that island of theirs. There's a limit to what you can do with salvaged material, and I think they've used up all that can be recovered from the collapsed parts of the building. There's been peace in Skyrim between men and vampires for as long as I've been a sailor, but old fears die hard. They're vampires, for Arkay's sake, not snow leopards or frost trolls. They don't just attack people out of nowhere for no reason, not these days. The Dawnguard and the Volkihar themselves put an end to that."

I decided to play dumb and see what else the man knew. "The Dawnguard? Who are they? I'm from Cyrodill, and we've never had anything but trouble from vampires there. What are they doing here with a castle of their own, all out in the open like that? Why don't the jarls attack them?"

"Ah...well, I don't know the details, but I do know they're in the Castle now and nowhere else, at least not openly, and they don't venture forth to raid human settlements the way they used to. It's a sort of live and let live situation, and the vampires there even helped in hunting down their wilder brethren on the mainland. That's why we've had so little trouble with vampire attacks of late. I was told that Lady Valencia gave her fellow vampires the choice of either submitting to the authority of the Volkihar and renouncing the right to attack humans at will, or being wiped out by the Dawnguard with the Volkihar's active assistance. Those who wouldn't go along were systematically killed off, and vampire attacks on the mainland stopped, more or less.

"You know about the Thieves' Guild, don't you? And the Dark Brotherhood? Organizations of people who shouldn't even be free, much less organized. But the lords of the different holds tolerate them, because they bring the criminal element under control, keep its activities at a level that can be lived with, and come down hard on anyone who goes rogue. Well, the Volkihar seem to have set up a Vampire's Guild, so to speak, that's forbidden random attacks entirely. What they do for blood these days, I don't know. Some say they found a way to drink horker blood, or something even more disgusting, but that's their business. All I know is that it isn't coming from the necks of me or my own any more, and that's all I need to know. Now are you coming or not?"

.

"_Horker_ blood? Well, whoever started that tale had an over-active imagination. That's the grossest idea I've heard in a _very_ long time."

Serana shook her head in amused disbelief. We were sitting in a small library off the main dining hall of Castle Volkihar, talking about a variety of things, past and present. Her mother, Lady Valencia, had received me briefly and formally when I had first arrived, but had then delegated dealings with me almost entirely to her daughter. We had the day to finish my inquiries, and then I would have to leave to help sail back the cargo ship I had arrived on. True, the captain had nervously offered to stay a night or two – if appropriately compensated – but that didn't look as if it were going to be necessary. Besides, he wanted far too much for the favor.

"Well, people do wonder," I remarked. "Vampires without a demand for blood seem decidedly odd to them. In fact, the whole arrangement here in Skyrim concerning vampires and the mortal races is odd, but it's a _pleasant_ kind of odd. The people I work for would like to see it spread to other provinces, but they've no idea where to start."

Serana paused for a moment before answering, her face thoughtful. I could see she was contemplating what to tell me, and what to keep secret.

"Well..." she began, "...I'm afraid I can't help you with other provinces. The situation in Skyrim may well have been unique, with my late father gathering power and influence that my mother and I have used to quite different ends than he probably intended. He wanted to conquer the mainland, to blot out the sun, and Elder Scrolls or no Elder Scrolls, that would have triggered an all-out war with humankind that vampires would almost certainly have lost. However, the whole affair did remind us of the power of unity. How could our united efforts be used to ensure the best possible outcome for us? That was the question we were left with. The question that _she_ answered for us."

Serana paused for thought again.

"What you were told is true, most of it anyway – nearly all of it, except for that disgusting speculation about horker blood." She made a wry face. "It was the Dragonborn who showed us the path, drawing from her own experience. You know that at one time or another she was involved with both the Thieves' Guild and the Dark Brotherhood, and reached the highest ranks in both of those organizations. She came to understand the extent to which the authorities value order and predictability, and to realize that for the sake of these, they are usually willing to overlook a certain amount of otherwise forbidden activity. It was with that in mind that she proposed we form a guild of our own, backed by the prestige of the largest and most powerful vampire clan in the North. The arrangement has worked without a hitch for decades now, and I see no reason why it should ever be changed. Vampires have become a known quantity, predictable, and have ceased to pose an uncontrolled and undefined threat to the Ten Races. That's why the jarls and the Dawnguard leave us alone out here. Only a fool quarrels with success."

Shaking her head, she went on. "I am no expert, but I understand that the situation across most of Tamriel is quite different than it is in Skyrim. Although it was different in the past, even the recent past, at present there are no dominant families or clans among the vampires in most of the other provinces. There are only disorganized groups, like the feral vampires we helped put down as part of our arrangement in Skyrim. This leaves you with no foundations to build on elsewhere."

This was certainly disappointing, though I had suspected something of the kind. The remains of the Volkihar organization built up by Lord Harkon to conquer the mortal races had been easily transformed after his death into a force to police the vampires themselves, but the Volkihar were unique. There was no real counterpart to them elsewhere.

"Of course..." Serana mused in a quiet voice, as if to herself. "Of course, it might be possible for _us_ to do it...though it would probably take years. Working with the Dawnguard again, I suppose; they to threaten, we to cajole, like the jaws of a vise. It would require an immense effort. But the challenge would be worthy of the traditions of our house, and if it succeeded, the Volkihar would be honored across all of Tamriel."

It was an intriguing thought, though the Imperial Court might balk at encouraging the Volkihar to set up what would be in effect a vampire state within the state. It would have to be sold to the court as the way to transform a disorganized rabble of enemies into an organized and loyal vassal organization. For Serana, such a development would mean her family would become undisputed leader of all the vampires in Tamriel, a position that no vampire house had attained in all of recorded history. Power and glory, but in harmony with the interests of others and granted in peace, not seized in war. In this aim, I could see clearly that she was very much her father's daughter and shared most of his ambition, except with _much_ more common sense and a greater willingness to work with others.

"And if Volkihar dominance does become real, it will all have begun not with a vampire, but with a slender Breton who always looked as if the wind were about to carry her away," Serana continued, smiling and nodding to herself, lost in her memories for a moment. "I used to joke that there wasn't enough of her to make a vampire a decent breakfast. And yet despite all that, she always pushed so hard, always on the edge...frankly, I was surprised she lasted as long as she did. It was her relationship with Shahvee that kept her going, no doubt about that. You never met Shahvee, I suppose?"

"I'm afraid not. She died some time ago, long before the Synod had the idea for this inquiry. They say she had a very stable personality, rock-solid, never flustered by any emergency, always there with something practical to suggest. And, of course, an absolute and unquestioning love for the Dragonborn and their adopted daughter."

"Shahvee was the earth and the Dragonborn was the growing tree. The tree soars up into the sky and battles the winds, but if not for the earth's firm embrace around its roots, the first storm would bring it crashing down. They were married a few months after our last quest together, after Alduin fell and the world became a bit more peaceful. They nourished each other; Shahvee was the only one I ever knew of that had that sort of strength. It was good to see. I spent months on campaign with the Dragonborn, long enough to wonder whether there was anyone who could long survive the strain of an intimate relationship with her. Certainly it was beyond my power."

There had always been rumors that the Dragonborn and Serana had been a good deal closer than colleagues during their time together. It was too delicate a matter to ask about directly, so I just threw out a word from her description, hoping she would take the bait.

"Strain?"

"In a way, she was a vampire herself," Serana explained. "Only instead of draining blood from her prey, she drained emotional energy. Her need was blind, absolute. I don't think she meant to affect others this way. It was because she was forever being forced into situations where her sense of duty made demands far beyond her strength, which wasn't that abundant in the first place. We became lovers partly because I was lonely myself, and miserable at my father's madness, and because she was so brave and beautiful, I think the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, heartbreakingly vulnerable, her whole body covered with bruises and scars... but it also seemed unavoidable in the face of her absolute need for support, for love... for anything to cling to to make her task more bearable. She _absorbed_ you. I fell headlong into the abyss of her need, and it took me quite a while to climb out again. Thank goodness I managed to get free without hurting either her or myself. Not much, anyway."

After a long pause, she added, "I haven't been in a relationship since. She was a force of nature. What do you do for an encore? Everyone else is a glowbug competing with a bolt of lightning. There was no future for us, though, we both knew that. An immortal undead pledged to a mortal being is a sure recipe for misery. I wish she'd allowed me to turn her, or after she got married, both Shahvee and her, so that they could have been together for all time. But she felt that becoming a vampire would be playing a cheap trick on the Daedric Princes. Did she ever tell anyone the story of my mother and Durnahviir in the Soul Cairn? I don't know if that one got around or not."

If it had, I hadn't heard it. "I've never read about anything like that, and it's been my business for years now to review every scrap of evidence or testimony about the Dragonborn. There isn't even very much on the Soul Cairn itself. Durnahviir, of course, we knew about all along, who it was and how it could be summoned."

"Well, Durnahviir had been a necromancer, and like a lot of his fellow mages, it tried to strike a bargain with the Ideal Masters, the rulers of the Soul Cairn. It was to have the ability to summon armies and wield vast power if only it would first stand guard over my mother until her death. It didn't ask the right questions, and the Ideal Masters somehow neglected to mention that my mother is a vampire and immortal, which meant that Durnahviir had been tricked into eternal service in return for a reward it would never be able to enjoy. The Dragonborn felt that if she became immortal as a vampire, she would be cheating the Daedric Princes in much the same way – she had pledged herself after death, but the pledge turns into a deception if the death will never occur. On top of everything else, she was a painfully righteous person... committed to doing things the correct way, to conquering chaos. She sometimes used to joke that the Daedric Prince she really wanted to serve was Jygglag, the Prince of Order, but nothing has been heard from him for centuries now. So she had to do the best she could with the ones that still remain, she said, the ones still connected with the mortal world."

"Righteous, needy, empathic, vulnerable, bold, driven, fearful, orderly, power-hungry... This puzzle gets more complex by the minute. None of the pieces quite fit."

Serana stood up, stretched, and abruptly changed the topic.

"Before it gets too late, let me run you around the rest of the castle. Members of the Dawnguard visit now and again, when we have to coordinate, but having a witness from the Imperial City might be useful to reassure the Court if we do go for that proposal to expand our area of operations. You'll see that our setup here is very domestic - almost cozy, if your idea of cozy is broad enough to accommodate all-stone construction and the true vampire ambiance, consisting chiefly of an almost total absence of light from outside."

We walked through long warm corridors lit by dim lamps, our footsteps echoing in the emptiness. The occasional window high in the walls glowed brightly with the afternoon sun, but for obvious reasons, these were few and far between. No one seemed to be at home. "Most of us are more active at night," Serana explained. "No need for that in here, but old habits die hard." There was a huge assemblage of scholarly apparatus: desks, writing materials, cabinets and display boxes, tables strewn with papers, and an uncountable number of books and other bound volumes. Alchemy and enchanter's tables were mingled with the desks and bookcases, each surrounded by shelves loaded with potion bottles, containers of ingredients, and the inevitable dusty tomes.

Real research took place here, Serana pointed out, not just crafting of previously discovered potions and philters. At one point, she handed me a tiny bottle of a design I had never seen before, red with a broad white band around the neck. "Probably the most potent anti-disease potion for the mortal races ever formulated," she said, with a hint of pride. "Our most important discovery so far. It even cures vampirism and lycanthropy, so we have to be a little bit careful handling it. For the present, most of it is marketed through the Temple of Kynareth in Whiterun. It's things like this that pay for the lumber and stone we need for repairs - small, light, valuable, and easy to sell. Take a few with you - drinks are on the house today."

The air became close and a bit musty as we descended toward the basement, but the surroundings remained clean and orderly. We passed through areas that were still damaged, crudely patched with cement or wood, but the fallen pillars, stone debris, and thick cobwebs that feature prominently in Dawnguard descriptions written just after the castle fell had all been cleared away. We climbed a floor or two to walk out on a balcony overlooking the ship, which was still being unloaded, and Serana pointed out that most of the stevedores were not human. "Tame trolls from Fort Dawnguard. Best five hundred septims a head we ever spent. They live for fifteen, twenty years if you treat them right, lift twice the weight a mortal or vampire can handle, and are smart enough to be trusted with basic building work as well as shifting materials around. Easy to keep them happy - an extra haunch of venison is all you need to make their day - and best of all, they don't imagine things."

I nodded in agreement. "You don't have any ordinary mortals here at all, then, on a permanent basis. Convenient, but..." I let the question trail off and waited a moment before adding, "That's what they'll ask me back in Cyrodill. If it's not horker blood, then whose blood is it? People aren't being attacked or disappearing on the mainland. You must admit it looks puzzling."

Serana rolled her eyes and sighed. "I _told_ mother you'd ask that. She was rather hoping you wouldn't. But it's a bit too obvious to miss."

Without explaining further, she led me down several narrow flights of stairs to a small room, which to judge from its cool temperature was well below ground - or sea - level. She waved her hand at the shelves lining the walls, which held rank upon rank of squat, rather bulbous, dark-red flasks. Again, it was a style of bottle I had never seen before, despite my long experience with nearly all of the potions and poisons currently available.

"The famous blood potion," she explained. "Stable, very concentrated, good for all that ails you - if you're a vampire. This is what our brethren that still live among humans in the rest of Skyrim use as a substitute for snacking on their neighbors."

"And of course the next question is going to be...," I began.

"...where do we get the blood to make the blood potion? I expected it would be something along those lines."

I nodded, and there was a long silence.

"That's the tricky part." Serana continued, with a sigh. "It's part of our arrangement with the jarls, and the Dawnguard knows about it as well, though it's never made them very happy. Still, it's worked so far."

We walked in silence down yet another passage deep in the earth. The rooms off the passage now had barred doors, and ropes and shackles began to make an appearance. We were evidently approaching the castle's dungeons.

As we reached the door at the end of the passage, it opened. On the other side was a woman who appeared to be in late middle age, a Breton by the look of her, in the dress of a high-level magic user. She glanced sharply at me, and then turned to Serana.

Serana spoke first. "Hi, Sybille. Just giving someone the grand tour."

"First tourist you've ever brought down here, Lady Serana. Or are we taking volunteers now?"

"Sybille, _please_. He's here with mother's knowledge and permission. From the Synod in Cyrodill, the imperial court, gathering material on the Dragonborn and her associates. That's what brought him here."

"Yes, here, but why _here_ here? You know it's a sensitive area."

"Because even the Imperial Court is bright enough to ask the questions that lead here," Serana snapped back. I could see that this wasn't the first time they'd argued. "And we may be working with them in the near future. None of the jarls screamed and fainted when we set this system up. I think the Emperor and his court can bear to hear about it."

"I hope you know what you're doing," the older woman muttered half to herself, and stepped aside from the door to let us in.

.

Half an hour later, we were back in the library from which we had started, and most of my questions had been answered.

"Silly," I said ruefully. "I never noticed how good old-fashioned capital punishment has been slowly but steadily supplemented in most of the holds by a sentence of 'exile and degradation' for terms of ten, twenty-five, and even fifty years, the last in reality a life sentence. So here is where they end up."

Serana nodded. "We don't torture them, as you have seen. Put them to sleep, drain most of their blood – but not so much as to endanger their lives – and return them to their cells before they wake up; repeat as needed. Sybille has the whole routine down pat. She used to do much the same when she was mage at the court of the Jarl of Solitude, with the prisoners in the Solitude jail, until she felt it prudent to retire here before too many people began wondering at how ageless she always seemed. As a matter of fact, it was probably her who gave the Dragonborn the idea to use convicted felons as a source for blood. But it was the Dragonborn who remembered it, and made it happen on a large scale."

"What happens when they have served their sentences?"

"They're released back to their Jarls, who either forgive them or exile them permanently," Serana explained. "I understand it depends a great deal on what crime they were guilty of, and what happens afterward. The fellow on the table today, for instance – he's in for raping a mother and her teenage daughter. If at the end of his sentence, his victims feel it fitting to forgive him, he'll go back to a more or less normal life; if not, he'll be banished somewhere. He won't remember his time here as anything other than a confused, terrifying nightmare. We have the drugs to make sure of that. A dose of cure disease potion every time he is tapped as well, to guard against any chance of him becoming a vampire himself."

"A brilliant solution to the problem," I remarked. "But a shade ruthless, like a lot of her actions. She was decisive and quick to move when she saw her way through to a solution. And then after everyone had congratulated her and the praise was still ringing in her ears, she would go home and cry all night in Shahvee's arms, sick with fear that she'd made a mistake or forgotten something somewhere, or so I've been told. A very complex character."

"Yes..." Serana said in a soft voice that trailed off into a long silence.

Then she looked straight at me again, and now almost whispering, went on.

"I still love her. I will _always_ love her. But it was far, far worse than you just said. She brought me to tears every day with the vicious way she would turn on herself if she suspected she might have made a mistake. You would never guess from how she dealt with others how unfair she could be to herself. It broke my heart over and over again. I think that was why I had to leave her... I could have become human, after all, given up the vampire's eternal life, but I didn't have the strength to see her suffer every day.

"Thank all the gods that Shahvee was there for her, finally. But Shahvee told me at her funeral that when the Dragonborn was dying, she tore at herself so viciously that Shahvee wished she could die as well rather than hear it. In the end, she said, the only thing that diverted the Dragonborn from her self-hatred was her beginning to tease Shavee about their sex life. Doesn't surprise me. That sometimes worked when she was with me, as well, not the talk but the deed. Sex was a way for her to lose herself for a time, but it was never enough. Nothing was ever enough.

"In the end, she hurt all those who loved her, beyond anything we could have ever imagined. But none of us ever paused to count the cost. For all of us – she was always the most important thing in our lives, and now I'm the only one left with the memories, forever. Immortality is not always the blessing some think it to be."

We sat there together in silence for a long time after she finished, both deep in our own thoughts. Then she got up and went over to a bookcase in the far corner of the room. She came back with a crudely made book, a few leaves between two covers, and put it on the table in front of me.

"You know that one of the actions my father ordered before he died was an attack on the Hall of the Vigilants over on the mainland. It wasn't that the Vigilants of Stendarr were our worst enemies, not by a long shot – they were more pathetic than anything else. They didn't pose a tenth of the threat the Dawnguard did later, before we found a way we could work together for the good of all. I think my father just became infuriated with their constant harassment, always nipping at his heels, annoying our people, and he lashed out violently. That was his way.

"Our people brought back some documents from the Vigilants' archive, though most of the material there burned with the hall. These sheets concern the Dragonborn. They talk about an incident in her early career, when her thirst for the power she needed led her down some dark paths. It was painful for me to read, but it's part of the picture you want to draw. Please take them away with you. You needn't bother to return them."

.

Serana walked me out to the dock when the ship was finally empty, just as the afternoon was shading into the evening, even though the dying rays of the summer sun made her visibly uncomfortable. I could see she was still torn between the love my inquiries had evoked and the pain that followed that love as close as a shadow, even though she had long ago accepted the one as the price of the other. She had a final warning for me, an admonition that I tried to keep in mind later, with mixed success.

"Be careful about your own feelings. An emotional vampire can drain you from beyond the grave. She wouldn't have ever intended it to happen, but it is so easy to fall into her and never come out. You don't want to be there. I do, but the pain is part of me now. Take my advice and spare yourself."

I nodded. It was good advice. The best advice is always given by those who have failed to take it earlier, and suffered the consequences.

We docked at Dawnstar again just as Secunda rose to join Masser above the horizon, a clear, warm night. The captain thanked me, though visibly disappointed that I would not be making another trip in the near future, and rather bewildered when I refused his offer of pay.

"Did you get _everything_ you wanted?" he inquired, in a hopeful tone of voice.

"Everything and more," I reassured him, and set off for my room in the Windpeak Inn, uncomfortably aware of the thin volume I was carrying. I had had enough for one day. I placed the book on the desk in my room, and went immediately to sleep without even bothering to eat, to dream about something that I could no longer remember when I woke, other than the sound of it weeping softly but constantly through all the night.


End file.
